The present invention relates, in general, to semiconductor structures and, more particularly, to semiconductor structures having isolation regions.
Generally, semiconductor device manufacturers fabricate many semiconductor devices within a single semiconductor material. An important consideration in manufacturing semiconductor devices is providing electrical isolation between different devices which comprise an integrated circuit. Electrical isolation is particularly important when monolithically integrating bipolar junction transistors with insulated gate field effect transistors. A common technique for isolating semiconductor devices is by providing vertically oriented structures, such as dielectric filled trenches, between the various devices. A drawback of these types of structures is that noise generated by one device travels through the substrate and interferes with other devices. Another technique is to build the devices on a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) substrate and separate each device laterally by oxide filled trenches. This technique adds to the complexity of the processing and requires the use of SOI technology.
Accordingly, it would be advantageous to have a structure and method for electrically shielding semiconductor devices manufactured in the same semiconductor material from each other. It would be of further advantage for the method of manufacture to be cost efficient and integrable with available processing techniques.